Friday, January 30, 2009

Wheels wondered if the personality type of the blog changes over time. I suppose it does. This time:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

There is some effort in congress to re-instate the "fairness doctrine" at the FCC as reports have it that there are people on the radio who are not at all supportive of the new administration. It is also generally conceded that this approach probably won't fly. Instead, there's a program referred to as "localism" which allows locals to bitch about a radio stations content, and have the FCC harass the station into either giving up the content, or having its lisence not renewed.

More likely is that the left will use the subtle, silent, and creeping tool of government bureaucracy to strangle conservative talk radio. The enforcement of "localism" regulations, as described in a 17 November 2008 American Thinker article by Jim Boulet, would use a system of complaints to the FCC and community advisory boards to attack conservative radio. A few tweaks in FCC regulations can require radio stations to submit time-wasting and expensive reports, hold public meetings, and create panels of local residents, led by community organizers, to evaluate programming. If the bureaucrats and peoples' panels are not pleased with a radio station's compliance, they'll be able to take away the station's license. The goal would be to attack conservative radio in obscurity, without an open showdown.

If such a thing comes to pass, the quick solution will be to have form letters of complaint regarding the local TV stations and perhaps newspapers, available at conservative gatherings for the attendees to pick up, fill in, and send to the FCC. Sauce for the goose, after all.

For all of you who have wondered what makes me the clever fellow I am, Bijou Renaissance Man may have found the answer.

But today, using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).......The damage affects the parts of the brain that control emotion, rage, hypersexuality, even breathing, and recent studies find that CTE is a progressive disease that eventually kills brain cells.

But then, so does beer.

I've only had one concussion, but it was a doozy. From here on in, all my quirks are laid on this doorstep, from the recumbent bicycles, to the 2-bore rifles. Hey, maybe the booze and loose women, too.

Nah, the judge might buy it, if a slick enough lawyer presents it right, but the wife won't cut me any slack at all, beyond what she's cut me already.

Back in '75, the people were mightily burned out over Nixon, completely unimpressed with Ford, who took the position that he was only a caretaker, and little enthused with the peanut farmer who used to be a nu-cue-ler engineer. The joke went around that all the candidates were unimpressive, so why couldn't we try it without a president once and see if it turned out any better. So we did.

It didn't work out well, and the new joke was that we'd do better picking someone at random out of the phone book. This year, I think we did.

Lets face it, this isn't even remotely any kind of economic stimulus, it's a long term pork funding bill designed to reward Oboes supporters, punish his enemies, and keep him in office, no matter how bad it gets. A fund of around 1 Bn is to be set up for groups like ACORN, who specialize in vote fraud. In a close election, one graveyard can make the difference.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Carnaby, over at Carnaby Fudge is fisking the Brady bunch, and as he says, fisking them got old a long time ago. Regrettably, they operate on the principle that a lie repeated often enough, and loudly enough, will become the truth, so refuting them over and over is the free mans burden, so to speak.

I did get something of a kick out of one part of their shopworn manifesto though:

ATF’s analysis of guns traced to crime showed that assault weapons “are preferred by criminals over law abiding citizens eight to one... Access to them shifts the balance of power to the lawless.”

Which made me think, if I was a gangsta selling crack on the corner of 18th and Williams, and I wanted the rival vendor at 19th and Williams to move along, in the Buddist sense of the phrase, I'd definately prefer to use a semiautomatic rifle on him than a law abiding citizen. If for no other reason because the rifle is easier to carry.

I have two sets of the "Illuminati Trilogy" appropriately, by two different authors, describing 3 peoples quests, quite independently of one another, to find out "What's Really Going On", and who's in charge of it.

In one of these six books, is a quote that I've come to appreciate over the years, that runs along the lines of this:

There exists a hierarchy of jobs one can get that involve the talents of accurate observation and recording of facts to reach a conclusion. At the top of this list must be things like "research scientist", or if you have the talent, but not the advanced degree, try "police detective". If you have no talent for this sort of thing at all, but like that sort of work, there's always journalism.

Day after day I keep seeing the great truth of this, but I can't find the original source of the quote.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Last year the budget for operating these United States ran about 2 Trillion dollars. This year, I have not heard of any part of the government operations that will be deleted or suffer a budget cut. The new administration is proposing to pump 800 Billion dollars into the economy to get us out of the doldrums, over and above the 2 Trillion we will have to spend already.

Government doesn't provide anything to justify its taxes in terms of value added to the economy, so where is this 800 Bn coming from? Unicorn farts? Simple math suggests that the government will need a 40% tax increase to cover the cost of this. To add insult to the injury, the "stimulus bill" appears to be mostly a vehicle for every piece of pork the congress was unable to sneak through in the last 10 years. Here's a partial list. There are lots more that expand on this without duplicating anything.

The economy is you and me, doing whatever it is we do to convince our fellow workers to give us some of what they produced in exchange for some of what we produce. The quickest way to get things moving again would be to go over the federal budget, and delete the stuff that isn't actually required to properly serve the population. A real curmudgeon would suggest abolishing anything whose title begins with "Department of...". This would include entitlement programs administered by said departments.

I'm partial to keeping the Department of Defense, but most of the rest are overdue for some clear-cut logging. Commerce, Energy, Education, and HHS come immediately to mind. This will probably happen when the congress votes to limit its own terms.

Friday, January 23, 2009

I learned today that our illustrious Governor has volunteered to take an undetermined number of prisoners from the Gitmo facility. Hopefully he has something in mind besides letting them post bail and move into the projects.

In the spirit of bipartisan helpfulness, and on behalf of my gun club, I volunteer our fraternal organizations auspices to taking as many of the Gitmoans as our president wishes to give us. I assure him that none of these down-trodden cases will be detained any longer than necessary once they are transported to our range site. In fact I promise to give each and every one a 300 yard head start, in any direction, upon release.

The US Senate is described as "the most exclusive club in the world" and I'm sure everyone there is very clubby. It is also said that every single Senator gets up in the morning, stands in front of the bathroom mirror, and sees a president looking back. Historically, this is nothing but wishful thinking. In the last election, a Senator became president, because no one else was running. Usually a Governor does a lot better as he or she can claim to having executive experience beyond managing their own re-election campaign.

McCain is an idiot. Kyl is a Senator. Move along here. folks. Nothing to see here.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

3. Programming is as simple as scrolling down the menu selection to “Instant Text”. Type whatever you want to display, Hit Enter to submit. You can now either throw it up on the sign by selecting “Run w/out save” or you can add more pages to it by selecting “Add page”

** HACKER TIPS ** Should it will ask you for a password. Try “DOTS”, the default password.

In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed it. However if they did, never fear. Hold “Control” and “Shift” and while holding, enter “DIPY”. This will reset the sign and reset the password to “DOTS” in the process. You’re in!

Like everything that's this much fun, it's frowned upon by the authorities. So when you try this, drive a white pickup, and wear an orange vest and a white hard hat. Coincidentally, I'm only missing the vest. Maybe I'll start keeping my eye out for an abandoned one.

I mean, people need to know when they're coming up on a zombie zone, or when something unusual might be crossing the road.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

If you are looking for work, there are places that are hiring at a marvellous clip. If you were looking to get into manufacturing or service, forget it. Those jobs are drying up in the face of ruinous taxes and burdensome regulation. If the words "ruinous taxes" or "burdensome regulation" caused a thrill to run up your leg, then take hope, your boat has come in. From FabiusMaximus, comes this little gem:

Yes sirree, when all else is circling the drain, the government is hiring, like never before. Thousands of people are needed to document the thousands losing their jobs, to hand them the paperwork necessary to collect unemployment, and process the avalanche of Boomers entering retirement.For every person out there actually producing wealth, there is at least one person in government busy destroying it.

A friend of mine who once lived in India in the 60s told me a story about life there. It seemed that in India, government had grown huge, and private commerce was punishingly regulated, to the point that the dream of every Indian college grad was to get a government job, which pretty much came with tenure from day one, and kick back and shuffle paper with regular raises until you could retire.This made government jobs attractive, and about the only way to get one was to have a relative in government pull strings to get you hired.One young fellow approached his uncle who worked in one of the innumerable permitting agencies. The uncle told him that, alas, he was unable to hire the young man at the moment, but he was welcome to hang about in the office, so that when he was able to hire someone, the young man would be able to claim he had some experience, or at least knew the ropes. So he did.What he observed was an endless parade of people entering the office with a thick handful of papers, and begin at the first desk, handing the papers to the drone seated there who would read the documents with great interest until he was passed a few rupees, whereupon he would stamp the documents, and sent the petitioner on to the next desk, where the procedure was repeated.The aspiring drone, found himself a stool, a punjee, in Hindi, and seated himself on it between 2 desks to observe. Before too long, an applicant, numbed by the process, while moving from one desk to another, stopped at the fellows stool, and handed him his papers. The fellow, being a quick study, began studying the papers intently, while holding his hand out in a significant manner. When the petitioner put some money in his hand, he initialed the papers, and sent him on.At the end of the day, our hero went straight to the office supplies store, and had an official-looking stamp made up, exclaiming his title to be Punjee Officer.The next day, he was on the job, industriously inspecting and stamping papers, and collecting his fees with great enthusiasm, impressing his uncle with his "can-do" attitude, and soon landing a regular position.

India, at the time, was a client state of the Soviet Union, not so much that they espoused communism, but more to poke a stick in the eye of their former colonial masters, or anyone else who spoke English. With the collapse of the USSR, the attitude has changed, and capitalism is now much more acceptable.

* No matter how sure you are that conservatives are evil and just like Nazis, you can't round them up into camps.

Which brings to mind a vision of a conservative being dragged into the re-education camp, screaming "You can't do this to me!" as he and his captors pass under the camp gate, decorated with the motto of the Department of Re-Education: "Yes We Can!".

You get one guess who the secretary of re-education is.

Also, if they're too dumb to figure out what to kiss and when, they probably need a couple years of re-training anyway.

* Blaming Bush for problems is going to be harder the longer it's been since he was in office; you'll eventually have to find a new scapegoat. The Jews tend to be the popular choice.

Based on what I've heard the Arabs have already given the soon-to-be Secretary of State, this may not be as far-fetched as you think. Still, the Jews are a fairly reliable voting bloc for leftists, no matter how much they're persecuted by them.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

It seems there has been an outbreak of plague among Al-Quida. Now this could get interesting. The plague is something that spreads quickly in crowded living conditions coexisting with fleas. This is pretty much what you find when the weather gets cold, and Islamo-whack-os cuddle up together in caves in the boonies to keep warm.

The al-Qaeda epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in TiziOuzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers. The group, led by wanted terror boss AbdelmalekDroudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.

The extremists supporting madman Osama bin Laden went to Bejaia and Jijel provinces — hoping the plague did not go with them.

The advice given in 1347 was "Travel far, tarry long." which sometimes worked, but more often resulted in the disease being spread further and faster.

Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include boils in the groin, neck and armpits. In Pneumonic Plague, airborne bacteria spread like flu.

It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms.

Run fast, fellas. I bet some of you could even get to Gaza in less than a week.

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business.When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sicklyfather died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune.One evening at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.Her natural beauty took his breath away.

'I may look like just an ordinary man,' he said to her, but in just a few years, my father willdie, and I'll inherit $65 million.'Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later,

Grown without pesticides, or anything that might make life uncomfortable for the little critters that live in amongst the plants. Rat Lungworm disease has hit the organic lettuce market in Hawaii.

The disease occurs when parasitic worms are passed from rat feces to slugs or snails and then to people.

The worms usually die after several weeks but can cause significant pain and damage to the nervous system and, in some instances, paralysis, blindness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Good to know the worms have a short lifespan, but then fresh veggies have a short shelf life, too. The organic food advocates are also the ones advocating against gnetically modified produce that would be resistant to infestations like this.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

From the rather lengthy list of appointments the Messiah-elect has made so far, there are some that stand out and belie any suggestion he’s moving to the right on anything.

1. Hillary Clinton: The future Secretary of State is heavily involved in the Clinton Foundation, which a lot of world leaders, many of dubious provenance, consider to be the State departments back pocket. Some $600M has arrived there from unnamed sources recently.

2. Timothy Geithner: Our upcoming Secretary of the Treasury, who famously not only skipped paying his taxes for several years, but received refunds for the taxes he didn’t pay. Leona Helmsly was right: Taxes are for little people. She just wasn’t quite big enough herself. You have to be a cabinet member or a Senator to get out of paying taxes.

3. Carol Browner: Climate czarina, which is what they’re calling the head of the EPA these days. A member of the Socialist International, her philosophy is described in their platform:It is the people of the world who should exercise control by means of a more advanced democracy in all aspects of life: political, social and economic.What this means is that the government will have to micromanage your life. For your own good, of course.

The gift that keeps on giving. She’s apparently not real tolerant on the racial front, either.

4. Eric Holder: Attorney General. Former flunky of Janet Reno who famously denied that Elian Gonzoles had been taken at gunpoint to be turned over to Fidel Castro. This, as the famous photo of the event was in every newspaper in the world. He does not believe that the 2nd Amendment confers any individual rights, and calls the Heller decision a setback.

Clintons bag man in the pardoning of the Puerto Rican terrorists to get his wife the terrorist vote while running for the Senate.

5. Steven Chu: Energy Secretary. When I am dictator, this department will be abolished. Dr. Chu hates coal, hates nukes, and is a firm believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Your friendly local power plant will be burning remaindered copies of Earth In The Balance instead of coal to get us through the winter. Dr. Chu is from Berkley, and probably doesn’t know what winter is like.

6. Cass Sunstein: Regulatory Czar. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator. OK I give up. Don’t the other agencies do enough regulating on their own, or do we really need someone to make sure that when duplication of effort occurs, the most draconian version is used? This fellow has written:

Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “There should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.

But hey, peoples dogs vote, why not give them all the rest of the rights.

"We consume 25 percent of the world's oil, but we have less than 3 percent of the world's oil reserves," he said. "We simply can't drill our way to energy independence."

Uh, Ken, how did we get here in the first place?

There are doubtless several more like this batch that I’ve left out or overlooked. In his defense, several of the Bush retreads have the virtue of being “mostly harmless”. The illustrated version of Hayeks “The Road To Serfdom” is on line, in illustrated format, and available for free. As the professor here, I’m assigning this as required reading.

The thing I think I see coming is the extension of bailouts from the banking industry to the MSM. Already Bank of America is now effectively owned by the government. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News are both for sale, and betting money says the New York Times and Washington Post will both be broke this year. What government, owing their position to papers like these, would hesitate for a moment to take these papers under their wing “temporarily”?

But you’ve got to have confidence in our elected officials. What could go wrong?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

With the Dems chances of impeaching president Bush dwindling away, one of the things suggested as a failure of the administration is the capture or killing of Osama Bin Ladin. I maintain that Bin Ladin was killed in the Tora Bora mountains sometime in 2003, which would allow Bush to take credit.

What he should have said in his farewell speech was that this is what happened, and thus dare Al-Quida to produce Bin Laden with an intact metabolism. So far, all we get is Zawahari nagging his followers to get off their lazy duffs and kill some Jews, or Americans, or somebody.

In the Jawa Report, Rusty Shackleford has done a statistical study based on Freedom hous's listing of the degree of freedom for most of the worlds countries, vs the percentage Muslim the population is.

A few years back a friend and I had a back and forth about this. In the end we decided to do a simple regression analysis with "freedom" being the dependent variable (as operationalized by Freedom House) and % of a nation that is Muslim (as reported by the CIA Factbook) as the predictive (independent) variable. The result? The higher the % of Muslims in a country, the less free it is. Even when controlling for things like poverty, the results hold up.

RTWT. More links and info there, most of which should come as no surprise.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Here's a writeup on a bill, introduced at the Federal level, appearantly intended to make life easier and safer for the average gangster, thug, whatever.

Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner's address in America.

The bill claims its purpose is "to protect the public against the unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with the unrecorded sale or transfer of firearms to criminals and youth."

The definition of "youth" varies somewhat. If a 19-year-old thug is shot by a cop while attempting to rob a bodega, this is reported as "the unnecessary firearm death of a youth".

There are a bunch of assaults on the rights of otherwise law-abiding citizens in this thing, but one of my favorites is the part that says that if a burglar steals your gun and sells it to a 17-year-old crack dealer who uses it to reduce the competition on his favorite corner, the gun will be quickly and easily traceable to the former owner, who will be charged and jailed. No word on what will be done with the shooter, presumable 30 days at county.

Rep Bobby Rush is transparently looking out for the well-being of the criminal culture. Being himself from Chicago, this is likely a large part of his constituency.

In some states, one-gun-a-month legislation is a popular way for politicians to suggest that they're actually doing something, about something or other. Perhaps the Republicans could model some legislation on this, limiting people to one vote per election. And defining people as organisme with a functioning metabolism.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

2 posts down is a refrence to President Harding and his approach to the economic slump that hit the country just after WWI. Note that his policy was to get the government out of business. Contrast this with this report from Obie about what he has in mind for us all.

"At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe," he said.

Folks, it was the government that got us here in the first place. Attempting to spend us out of the situation we're in, will only aggravate the problem.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and “Hustler” magazine publisher Larry Flynt have said they will petition Congress for financial aid along the lines of what the Big Three auto makers are getting.

Francis said that he and Flynt are asking for $5 billion, and that they have sent letters to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Congress and their local Congressman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) with the proposal. Rep. Waxman's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On the other hand, consider what the industry provides us with, and ask yourself, "Are these guys more, or less deserving than the auto industry?"

On the other hand, this could be just an extension of the Old Media being taken down by the internet. Maybe Hustler and the New York Times could have a joint going-out-of-business party. The imagery boggles the mind.

Obie has, one hopes, been getting non-stop briefings regarding what's Really Going On and having it explained to him that voting "present" is no longer an option. To that end, he is looking to "reform" social security and Medicare in an effort to save money.

Pointing with concern to "red ink as far as the eye can see," President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs — even as he campaigned anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the sinking economy.

Coming from a man who promised us universal health care to get elected, he now is beginning to sound like Simon Legree (look him up).Being the bluebird of happiness I am, I'm thinking he'll want to increase the retirement age to, say, 85. Temporarily. Until he can raise it to 100. We'll see.My position is that social security should be phased out, as quickly as possible without pulling the rug out from under anyone. The Chilean model for retirements works far better than ours, and costs the taxpayer nothing. Better than that, it doesn't provide the congress with a piggy bank it can loot.

Economic downturns are fairly common in this country, and in the rest of the world, and models of how to handle them abound. As it happens, President Harding faced one in 1920, but had it dealt with in a short time, and ushered in the roaring twenties.

One of Harding’s campaign slogans was “less government in business,” and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and “excess” profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did.

Advice that would serve well today, I think. The definition of an "economy" is people banging rocks together, and trading the results with other people for stuff they need. Money serves to make change. Government is, all too often, thugs who come around and relieve you of 20% of your banged rocks, leaving you to profit from only 80% of your labors. From the pounded rocks the government takes, we get a national defense, and possibly an interstate highway system. The rest is wasted.

They told me that political corruption would be the death of the Republican party, and they were right!

Caligula at least sent the whole horse, Minnesota just the back.

Al Franken. Al Franken.

From the commentary on the article at the link. It now appears that the trunks of enough abandoned cars have produced enough heretofore uncounted ballots to give Al 1000 extra votes and put him into the Senate. To quote Joe Stalin: "Those who vote, decide nothing. Those who count votes, decide everything."

Free, at no extra cost:Remember when Harry Reid pronounced the Iraq war "lost"? Well, he's still at it, only now he's added a civil war in Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon.

When Harry decides we've lost, then by God, we've lost. End of arguement.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Not the usual hand-wringing over the "plight" of this group or that, but a bit of game playing. Think about Gaza as though you were playing some advanced version of Risk.

If I were some up-and-coming military strategist in Iran, and wanted to make a name for myself, I'd suggest something along these lines:

Instead of having our proxies attack Israel at their own convenience, and get smashed, lets try having the less valuable asset (Hamas) attack the Jews in the south, using a limited, but noticeable, number of long-range rockets. We can supply a limited number of the longer range rockets in order to get their attention.When the Jews inevitably put together a counter attack, in significant force, we have Hamas fight a holding action designed not so much to provide a credible counter force, but to tie down the largest numbers of the Jewish military. When the fighting has reached some leveling-off point, we order our stronger asset, Hezbollah, to attack from the north as hard as possible. The newer (Chinese) rockets have enough range to reach Tel Aviv, and with the army tied up in the south, we can mount a highly effective attack for a much longer time, possibly adding to that, a limited land invasion of our own. Or if we can convince them it might work, perhaps the Syrians will get in and help.

I would not expect this to defeat Israel, but to severely weaken and demoralize it in preparation for an air or sea attack on Tel-Aviv using nuclear or biological weapons. Still, you never know, we might get lucky, and even if Gaza is completely depopulated, and Hezbollah is pounded back to the stone age, it's little enough skin off MY nose.

Went to the club pin shoot today, with 15 other folk. When we got there, about 8 in the morning, it was about 35 degrees. This was the days high. By the end of the pin shoot, the temp had dropped to 26, and the snow had begun. At this point, I left, but some of the others stayed for the follow-up match involving ARs.

In our defense, we had a fire barrel going there, fed by shot-up backstop wood, and shot-up bowling pins. The maple in the pins burns nice and hot, which almost makes you forget the plastic coating and its unforgettable aroma.

I'm going to try cutting the undamaged tops off some of the pins for use in a .22 match, to be held later. Judging from the way they got shot up, I'd say I could probably cut the tops off before the batch without bothering anyone, and probably helping a couple of unfortunates who had pins fall with the tops toward the shooter.

Me, I could have done better. I lost 3 rounds by very narrow margins, which, had I won them would have put me about 4th overall. We won't talk about my actual finish.

"Bob the Bowler" who ran the match is working on fixing everyone up with nicknames. Sounds like fun. Maybe we'll even adopt a dress code like these folks.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Yeah, I know you're supposed to make them on the first, but I suspect the hung over state a lot of people find themselves in is responsible for the low success rate later. Anyway, in the spirit of letting someone else make all your important decisions, Amazon.com has assembled a list of 10 resolutions for you, with 3 of their offerings per resolution to help you with them.

These suggestions include #1 losing weight, #4 eliminating your personal vices, such as drinking, smoking, and gambling, and #10 take up a new hobby, such as raising chickens for eggs and meat or making your own wine.

I suppose that indulging vices with products produced by the indulger, then don't count. Sort of like selling yourself carbon credits to offset the sports car you just bought. Just remember, that according to the supreme court, smoking the pot you grew in your back yard has an impact on interstate commerce, and thus comes under the regulation of the federal government.

The honorable members of the Supreme court are complaining that they don't make enough money. Big deal. I never met anyone who did, but just to help you see how tough it is, working in Washington and all here's a graph:

Click on the picture to enlarge.Now, when your paycheck goes to zero this year, just imagine how tough these folks have it.

Still. Seems like I got this notification some time back, and pushed the "go away" buttons, but here it is again. Got this from one of the principals on a Yahoo group I'm a member of:

Yahoo is Tracking Group Members

If you belong to ANY Yahoo Group - be aware that Yahoo is now using"Web Beacons" to track every Yahoo Group USER/MEMBER. It's similar tocookies, but allows Yahoo to record every website and every group youvisit, even when you're not connected to Yahoo. Look at their updatedprivacy statement at http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html

About half-way down the page, in the section on *cookies*, you willsee a link that says *WEB BEACONS*.

Click on the phrase "Web Beacons." On the page that opens, on the leftfind a box entitled "Opt-Out."

In that section find "opt-out of interest-matched advertising" linkthat will let you "opt-out" of their snooping. Click it and then clickthe opt-out button on the next page.

The latest chapter in the bailout saga, in which everybody gets to pick your pockets in the interest of saving the economy from people who selfishly won't spend money which, for some reason, they don't seem to have.It's been quite clear to me from the beginning that the congress doesn't give a rats patootie if Detroit ever builds another car, ever again, as long as all those UAW folks continue to get paid, so that some percentage of their wages wind up in the DNCs re-election coffers. When a newspaper begins to whine, the sound carries to the statehouse quite clearly, and no one sees any problem with a Dem controlled administration subsidizing a paper that endorses its candidates.

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

To my observation, the newspapers are seldom critical of a Democrat, especially if his party controlls the government, until he's safely in the joint and actually serving a sentence.

The first instance of serious and pervasive political censorship was initiated by Franklin Roosevelt’s FCC in the 1930s. The Yankee Radio network in New England frequently editorialized against Roosevelt. The FCC asked Yankee to provide details about its programming. Sensing the drift, Yankee immediately stopped broadcasting editorials in 1938. In order to drive its point home, the FCC found Yankee deficient at license renewal time. They announced,

Radio can serve as an instrument of democracy only when devoted to the communication of information and exchange of ideas fairly and objectively presented… It cannot be devoted to the support of principles he [the broadcaster] happens to regard most favorably… .

In other words, if you want your broadcasting license renewed, stop criticizing Roosevelt.

In the upcoming congress, there have been calls to renew the so-called "fairness doctrine" in an effort to silence criticism of the current administration, including Nancy Pelosi's "most ethical congress ever" . With an approval rating fluctuating between 9 and 11%, I gotta ask: "How's that going, Nancy?" Oh yeah, we just elected one of your Senators president, didn't we. Amazing what you can do with a 100% favorable rating from the press, isn't it?